Members of Communications Workers of America Local 1081 today joined their CWA counterparts across New Jersey in a "statewide picket line" to protest Gov. Jon Corzine's call for state workers to accept 12 unpaid furlough days and wage freezes.

Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerZayid Muhammad of CWA Local 1081 uses a megaphone to lead a chant during the protest today outside of the county offices at 10 Park Place in Newark.

"From here, it's only going to escalate," David Weiner, president of CWA Local 1081, said as his brethren paraded in front of county offices across from Newark's Military Park.

CWA Local 1081's Weiner, representing about 650 welfare workers among Essex County's 3,400 unionized employees, chanted into a bullhorn to back his state counterparts and to turn up the heat over his own local's stalled contract.

"Hey Joe Dee, you're rich and rude, we don't like your attitude," Weiner said as he led the chant against Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo Jr.

In a succession of highly publicized news conferences, DiVincenzo said a budget crisis required him to call on the county's unions to surrender four of their 14 paid holidays and to forgo raises in the final two years of a three-year contract yet to be signed.

Shortly after today's protest, DiVincenzo said he understood the CWA's frustration.

"But we're in a financial crisis," he said. "For us to get through what we have to get through, everybody has to sacrifice. ... I have to work for not only our employees but for our taxpayers. We pay the highest taxes, and we've got the highest foreclosure rate, so I have to fight for them."

For CWA Local 1081, one of 26 county unions whose contracts expired Dec. 31, 2007, the tide turned the day before Thanksgiving when, Weiner said, DiVincenzo's chief of staff called to "renege" on a memorandum of agreement for a new contract.

Communications workers protest unfair wages

Instead of the 9.5 percent wage increase over three years, Weiner said, they were told to accept 3 percent the first year, and "zero" percent for the remaining two years.

In DiVincenzo's first term, the unions accepted two years of "zero" increases in salaries, something family-services worker Fred Riviello Jr. recalled today on the Park Place picket line, one of several involving CWA locals in Newark.

Nearby, Isaac Garcia Jr. of Newark, a bilingual clerk typist, said the welfare caseload has spiked amid the deep recession, with recipients now coming from suburban Cedar Grove and Caldwell.

"We're the people serving the people in need. ... We're understaffed. ... The waiting time is two to three hours," he said. "We don't have less work. We have it harder."

The issue hits home for him as well, he said.

"My daughter just entered college," he said. "I have a mortgage. I have a car payment."

The Newark picketing was part of the statewide campaign by the 40,000-member CWA, the largest state worker union, challenging the fairness of Corzine's budget policies.

In a handout, the CWA asserts that the average state worker, with a salary of $51,000, is being asked to take a 8.1 percent pay cut, or $4,139 less, in furloughs and wage freezes while a tax increase on people earning $550,000 a year would amount to only $640.

Last month, an emergency rule allowing the state furloughs was approved at a Civil Service Commission meeting where four CWA members were arrested as they protested the act.